Una delegazione di Riminisud si è recata a Birmingham(uk) per avere un parere dalla locale polizia circa la lotta alla prostituzione di strada e sulle zone a luci rosse,il cosiddetto ZONING.Dall'incontro con il SUPERINTENDENT Gez Moore che comanda la stazione di polizia più esposta nella zona SUD della città, con 311 uomini ai suoi ordini,è emerso che:
1-La polizia inglese applica la legge che non tollera la prostituzione in strada arrivando all'arresto delle prostitute e dei loro clienti colti in flagranza e portandoli davanti alla corte di giustizia che li condanna nel giro di 24 ore a pene detentive e pecuniarie ,crescenti in caso di recidiva.
2-La polizia di Birmingham ha definito una mappa della zona SUD nella quale esistono zone in cui è tollerata la presenza di prostitute in strada(la maggior parte di loro fa uso di Crack e cocaina e si vende in cambio di cibo o per 5 sterline a rapporto) indicando le strade principali in cui non è tollerata la loro presenza.Questo a casa nostra si chiama ZONING e viene accettao alla lettera da tutti.
3-la polizia di Birmingham sta sviluppando progetti di partnetship con gruppi e associazioni di quartiere rivolti a scoraggiarre i cosiddetti comportamenti anti-sociali (anti-social beauvihoir)che in quel paese sono sanzionabili per legge individuando forme di partecipazione tese al recupero delle zone a rischio.
4-Per la cronaca esistono forme di dissuasione-distrazione del tutto originali praticate da quella polizia che mirano a ridurre il conflitto e a scaricare la tensione nelle zone o nei locali a rischio.Una di queste è la distribuzione nelle ore notturne tra i giovani di cospique quantità di LOLLY-POP(I LECCA LECCA) che,secondo gli esperti,impegnano i soggetti aggressivi in attività alternative come quella appunto di succhiare una caramella distogliendoli da azioni negative.Questo Si potrebbe provare anche da noi senza tanti problemi.Sul resto la faccenda pare più complicata.La delegazione continuerà nei prossimi giorni il giro di consultazioni nel resto d'Europa.
CZQUESTO IL RESOCONTO DELL'INTERVISTA CON IL SUPERINTENDENT GEZ MOORE..
On Friday 14 September 2007 we visited
Superintendent Gez Moore of West Midlands Police.The West Midlands Police force is based in
central England and the area
has 5,267,00 inhabitants (Rimini
has 250,000). There are 9,000 police
officers (Rimini has 1,000), which equates to
0.0017 officers per citizen (Rimini
has 0.004 officers per citizen). The head of West Midlands Police is the
Chief Constable. He has 4 Assistant
Chief Constables. The area is then
divided into 21 areas, called Operational Command Units, each one headed by a
Chief Superintendent. Below the Chief
Superintendent is the Superintendent, who oversees a number of Chief
Inspectors, Inspectors, Sergeants and Police Constables.Superintendent Moore is based at Thornhill Road
police station and looks after 4 police stations in total. There are 311 officers under his control.Supt Moore’s police area has particular
problems associated with drugs, prostitution and gun crime. He told us that these problems are being
dealt with by initiatives called “Neighbourhood Management” and “Neighbourhood
Policing”. These are government
strategies which involve the police making partnerships with others
organisations such as Youth Offending Teams, Probation Service, Local
Authorities and Social Services. They
hold regular community forums where the public tell the police about their
concerns.Although the government is concerned about
reducing offence like burglary and robbery the police find that the public are
often more concerned about less serious offences like drug dealing and anti
social behaviour. For this reason the
police do not tend to involve local politicians in community forums because
they tend to tell the police about their own problems rather than those of the
community in general!The success of the community forums tends
to depend on the members of the public involved. The area has a large ethnic mix. The white middle class section of the
community tends to accept neighbourhood policing. However where the ethnic mix is greater the
community are less responsive to the police, trust them less and have less
respect for what they are trying to do. Within the ethnic communities there are a lot of shootings, rapes and
gang warfare between different sectors.In the UK it is an offence for a woman to
loiter in the street for the purposes of prostitution. The problems with prostitution in Supt
Moore’s area are directly linked to drugs. The prostitutes are generally addicted to heroin or crack cocaine, and
sell sex to finance their drug addiction. There are very few prostitutes who are not drug addicts. They are enslaved by drugs rather than by
pimps. They also sell sex for amazingly
cheap prices – the police have dealt with one woman who sold sex in exchange
for a plate of chips!The police in this area are increasingly
using ASBOs (Anti Social Behaviour Orders) to tackle issues like
prostitution. An ASBO is not a criminal
penalty. It is a remedy under the UK
civil law which acts like an injunction and places restrictions on the freedom
of certain people and limitations on their behaviour – eg you can prevent a
person from going to a certain area altogether, prevent them from going there
during certain times of the day, prevent them from engaging in certain types of
behaviour etc.The advantage of imposing an ASBO rather
than arresting a person under the criminal law is that because the ASBO is a
civil remedy you need less evidence. In
the UK
to find someone guilty of an offence under the criminal law the evidence has to
be so good that the court is sure of his guilt. In the civil law the court only needs to be satisfied on a “balance of
probabilities” that a person is guilty. Offences such as kerb crawling, pimping, loitering for prostitution and
gun crime are always difficult to prove in the UK under the criminal law because
often witnesses are too frightened to attend court and give evidence. Under the civil law ASBO however the court
does not need as many witnesses and it can impose an ASBO based on police
intelligence alone. The second advantage of an ASBO is that if
you disobey its conditions you can be ARRESTED under the criminal law and
prosecuted and potentially sent to prison – so it is a serious remedy under the
civil law. Thornhill Road Police station is a national
role model for the use of ASBOs. It is
the only police station which has used ASBOs to place restrictions on drugs
dealers and people involved in gun crime. And these methods have worked – local people are much happier in recent
months because drug dealers have been removed from the streets. Also, there have been no murders in the area
yet this year (usually there are several murders a year). The key to the success with ASBOs is that
the police are not having to act alone – the public are encouraged to tell the
police about their concerns, the police then pass these concerns on to the
local council, lawyers from the council make the legal application for the ASBO
at court and the police provide the information which is needed by the court in
order for them to make the ASBO order. In addition to ASBO the police also work
closely with the Probation Service and prisons to try to rehabilitate convicted
criminals once they are released from prison. They go on joint prison visits to offer rehabilitation services. Once the criminal is released he is resettled
in the community on “licence”. This
means that he has to comply with certain conditions – eg to live in a certain
area, to be tested for drugs, to attend regular meetings with police and
probation service. If he does not comply
with these conditions he will have to go back to prison. The police have also supported the public
taking their own (peaceful) action to tackle prostitution. There is a certain area called Balsall Heath
in Birmingham which is like a mini Amsterdam, where
prostitutes stand in windows to attract business. Over the last 12 months the local community
started to organise their own patrols of the streets to try and stop this
trade. They walked the streets, lit
fires, took registration numbers of the cars used by kerb crawlers and stood
outside prostitutes’ windows to discourage trade. They made the police aware of what they were
doing in advance and the police encouraged this – they do not have enough
officers to police the area like this on a daily basis. There was some discussion at the meeting
about the regulation of the security industry. Under the Private Security Industry Act 2001 anyone employed in the
security industry must have a licence from the SIA (Security Industry Authority). In addition to this the police have powers
to put short term additional conditions on the operating licences issued to
certain bars and discos – eg if a band linked to gun crime is due to play at a
bar the police can ask a court to impose restrictions, such as forcing the bar
to use CCTV, metal detectors, searches of customers etc.
Bars and discos can also get involved in the
“Pubwatch’ scheme. This is a joint
scheme organised between the police and the bars/ discos. The security staff at the bars/ discos are
linked up by radios supplied by the police and can exchange intelligence about
troublesome customers and pass on information between themselves.
